Boulder's Fresh Produce Holdings LLC may be three decades in, but the company is just getting started, its co-founder says.

Fresh Produce, a designer, manufacturer and retailer of colorful apparel for women and children, this past weekend celebrated its 30th anniversary.

While the milestone provides a moment for company officials to reflect on the past, it also signals a turning point in the clothier's future, said Mary Ellen Vernon, who founded Fresh Produce with her husband, Thom, after the two successfully hawked vibrantly hued silk-screened T-shirts in Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympics.

"It feels like a relaunch of the brand," Mary Ellen Vernon said last week.

Color continues to play a significant role in the products, but the clothing line was redesigned to include more "thoughtful shaping" and to be more "on-trend" for the current generation of women 45 years and older.

The clothing has evolved into a year-round lifestyle brand, she said.

Fresh Produce also recently remodeled its 26 stores to give a more boutique feel and to better portray the soul, spirit and authenticity behind the brand, she said.

At the company's flagship store in Boulder, that redesign included the creation of a "Back Porch." A 700-square-foot space in the back of the retail store includes a community table, a picnic bench and a couple of chairs.

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The Back Porch is intended to serve as a space where members of the community can host meetings, customers can have "girls night" gatherings and Fresh Produce officials can meet with clients.

Fresh Produce also debuted a custom Internet radio station, "Radio in Color," that streams brand-appropriate music — such as Sixpence None the Richer's upbeat "Kiss Me" or the piano-driven "The Scientist" by Coldplay — in addition to some inspirational tidbits from Vernon.

The path to this point, however, came with plenty of hard times and difficult decisions.

"Like so many, the (recent) recession knocked us to our knees," she said. "You had to make some really tough choices."

Fresh Produce cut its workforce by 50 percent and saw its wholesale customer count drop to 500 from 1,000.

"You just had to do it with the right intentions and trust that it was the right thing to do," she said.

After a rough two to three years, the company saw signs of a turnaround in 2010 and 2011, she said.

Now, with about $50 million in annual sales, the company is almost to its pre-recession revenue levels.

The broader, industry-wide trends appear somewhat favorable as well.

Women's apparel retail sales were $116.4 billion in 2013, up 4 percent from the prior year, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, New York-based consumer research firm.

Fresh Produce's rebranding and redesign actions of the past year should net gains starting in 2015 and beyond, Vernon said.

One contributing element to those growth expectations is Fresh Produce's wholesale business. The company plans to increase its base of 500 customers through adding additional accounts with Dillard's and Macy's stores.

Fresh Produce may have been late to the online game by launching its e-commerce business in 2006, Vernon said, but the firm has seen consistent double-digit annual sales gains.

In each of the past three years, online sales have grown more than 20 percent, she said.

The company plans to open more retail stores in its existing markets — which include Colorado, Arizona, California, Florida and Georgia — and enter new areas such as Texas.

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